


Situation Normal

by SylvanWitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pre-Series, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 12:07:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2150139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>For the first three months, Sam guards the door to normal with a focus his father would be proud of, if his father were still speaking to him and if Sam could manage to say it without sneering.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Situation Normal

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in March 2010, posted it somewhere, pulled it for work-related reasons. Someone kindly requested to read it, so I thought I'd post it here.

For the first three months, Sam guards the door to normal with a focus his father would be proud of, if his father were still speaking to him and if Sam could manage to say it without sneering.

 

When someone in the group makes a drunken remark about the “ghouls getting them” when they trespass through the cemetery humming the _Buffy_ theme one warm autumn night, he doesn’t correct their misconceptions about the creatures he and Dean first fought when Sam was thirteen.

 

Another time, when they’re accosted outside a bar by three townies looking for a fight, Sam is careful not to seem any more adept at self-defense than the average college freshman, and he nurses the resultant black eye with a kind of perverse pride for the next six days.

 

He absolutely never corrects the atrocious grammar of the grad student teaching Greek 110.  That’s just bad manners, and anyway, it’s an easy three credits.

 

But after awhile, after people start calling him by name, the casual “Hey, Sams” going to his head, he guesses, Sam lets his guard down.

 

He doesn’t realize he’s done it the first time. 

 

Halfway through an explanation of the origins of the Rosicrucian cross—and honestly, the subject came up organically, someone claiming way more credit for Da Vinci than the guy deserved—Sam catches the looks.  They range from curious to surprised, and he stutters and lets the words die out, casting around desperately for something else— _anything_ else—to say.

 

He’s saved the trouble when Mike shouts, “Dude, what’d you, like, read _Time Life_ books for fun as a kid?”

 

Sam laughs at himself, as loudly as everyone else, and doesn’t let them see his relief as he excuses himself to head to the bathroom.  There, leaning against the sink, staring at his wavering reflection in the cloudy glass, Sam sees something at the edges of his eyes—maybe something of the old Sam, the one who wasn’t normal.  This he blinks furiously away, wiping at his face with a rough paper towel before returning to the table with a memory-obliterating pitcher.

 

No one notices he’s quieter after that, and he gets lucky on the way home, the pretty blonde girl, Jessica something, slipping a receipt with blurry blue numbers on the back into his suddenly sweaty palm.  She smells of beer and strawberries when she leans up to butterfly a kiss across his cheek and breathe, “Call me,” into his unbelieving ear.

 

The second time he slips, it’s harder to recover, Jess so close she can’t help but feel the frantic knock of his heart against his ribs.  His mind frozen, he casts about for something reasonable to explain why he’s inside of her, her legs wrapped around his hips, her hot breath breaking across his neck, and he’s saying another person’s name.

 

The only thing he can come up with later—“Deanna was an ex-girlfriend.  I don’t even know where that came from.  I’m so sorry, Jess.  I’m so, so sorry”—sounds lamer with every desperate word.

 

Her hand soft on his bare thigh doesn’t help his concentration.

  
“You said ‘Dean,’” Jess corrects, dipping her head to try to catch his eyes, fastened for the last five minutes on the scuffed linoleum floor of his dorm room.

  
When he’d imagined his first time with a girl, Sam can’t say this part of it ever came up.

 

“I—“

 

“Shhh,” Jess soothes, running her hand almost absently up and down his leg.  It tickles, and he has to tense his muscles not to shift under her touch, afraid she’ll misinterpret it, afraid that at any second she’s going to get up and walk out and he’ll never see her—or any of their friends—again.

 

“It’s okay, Sam.  I don’t mind that you’re bi.  I think it’s…kinda hot, actually.”

 

“Bi?” Sam whispers, distracted by trying to remember if he’s ever told her his brother’s name.

 

“Dean’s a guy’s name, isn’t it?”  She says it offhand, like this is the kind of thing couples often talk about after unsuccessful first time sex.

 

“Ye—yeah,” He manages, realizing for the first time that there might be a way out of this mess that doesn’t involve transferring to another college.

 

“Yeah,” He says again, firmer.  “But I don’t want… .  I mean, I’m all about you now, Jess.  You’re the only one I want.”

 

That seems to be the right thing to say, since he goes from her hand on his thigh to her thighs around his waist.

 

Some time later, having happily finished what they’d started, as Sam soothes Jess down into sleep with a gentle hand along her still-shaking thigh, he closes his eyes tight against the sinking feeling that he’s just lost something he might never get back.

 

This is normal.  This girl whose hair smells like berries, whose slowing breath leaves a warm, damp spot on his chest, whose nose makes a faint whistling sound when she exhales.  Normal. 

 

He reminds himself of that again in the morning, when, still shaking off a dream in which Dean is saying, “Sam... Sam?  Sam!” as he disappears backwards up a dark and winding road, Sam watches Jess saunter to the door in his tee-shirt and smile at him as she ducks out of the room.

 

After that, it’s easier to remember to be normal, easier to act it when he’s got a constant reminder of normal’s rewards, his sunny warm girl with her bright smile and blonde hair, with her little hands and the confident way she touches him that belies the shy public smile she sometimes wears just to drive him crazy.

 

The third time he forgets, he’s gotten the knife away from the guy before he even registers Jess’ panicked, “Oh my god!” or the way Mike is cursing over his shaking hands that can’t type in 9-1-1 without misdialing.

 

By the time Becky and Zach have made it to the corner store back the way they’d come, Sam has the guy on the ground, knife against his throat, smile wide on his face that makes the would-be mugger flinch.

 

He shrugs off a hesitant touch to his shoulder, barks, “Back up,” at whoever it was, and doesn’t take his eyes from his prey.

An eternity later, as they shuffle nervously, hardly talking to each other much less looking at Sam, waiting for the patrolman to get done interviewing Zach, the last of them to go, Sam wonders what it will be like to be alone again, wonders if he’s got it in him to start over, find a new group of people to pretend he’s normal with.  Wonders if it’s even worth it.

  
Maybe Dean was right.  Maybe they—him and Dean, together—were the only normal he’d ever know. 

 

Maybe it’s always going to be like this.

 

Suddenly, Jess asks, “So, when did you first know you were a mutant, Sam?”

 

“Yeah,” Mike chimes in.  “And is Wolverine as big a douchebag as he seems in the movies?”

 

“Can you, like, move shit with your mind?” Alison asks, her Valley voice firmly put on for the occasion.

 

Sam scans their faces, from the girl he thinks he just might love to the friends they’ve had around them from the first days of their freshman year.  The eyes on him are affectionate, uncertain but open, and for a bright, clean moment, a span of seconds when their eyes are all he sees, Sam considers telling them everything, the whole truth of who he is, leaving out only the private part about how he loves his brother (and maybe the bit where his mother was burned to death by a demon).

 

But then his eyes catch Zach’s furrowed face as he earnestly answers the cop’s questions.  He sees the bubble-top of the cop car, hears the squawk of the on-board radio, watches as the other officer waves along lagging traffic.

 

Hears the speculation of the crowd kept back by yet more cops’ firm commands.

 

Suddenly struck by having been here before…or again…a sense that in this moment hangs whatever else his life will be, Sam sees Dean’s face, as clearly as if his brother had just glided by in the Impala with the driver’s side window open, Zeppelin blasting from the tape deck, eyes and smile all for Sam.

 

With an ease born of practice, Sam lies, letting go at last of what normal must be like in favor of an approximation his friends can accept without ever finding out Sam’s actual self.

 

“I was kinda pudgy as a kid, and my dad make me take self-defense.  Guess it just came back to me.”  Sheepish shrug, shy smile, a few back-slaps and high-fives later, Sam’s walking with his girl’s arm through his own and Mike and Alison are arguing over who would win in a fight, Buffy or Wolverine.

 

Tucking Jess’ hand in tighter, Sam turns his head away to watch a bird settle on a chimney top, smile slipping a little when he remembers the way his brother would touch him on nights like this, with the moon bright above and the world wide open.

 

Then Jess says, “Hey,” and starts to ask him a question, and he turns back to her with his happy-to-be-here grin firmly in place.

 

Situation normal, Sam thinks, and in his head, Dean finishes the phrase.

 

 


End file.
